Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal, on the day before Holi, shared an image which depicted a man running behind a ‘Swastika’ shape with a club in his hand, driving out the symbol that is considered holy in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism in India.
https://twitter.com/ArvindKejriwal/status/1108408847121686528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The caption on the image read, “Hoping for a Delhi, that I actually wouldn’t mind visiting or living in.” The image, which is strange for a chief minister to share on multiple levels, did not go down too well with Twitterati.
While on one hand, Kejriwal seems to be encouraging people to indulge in violence, it also appears like an insult to the Hindu symbol of ‘Swastika’ (in the second figure) which is being beaten up by a man with a club.
The image Kejriwal shared could be argued to be anti-Nazi message as Nazis had ‘stolen’ the Swastika symbol for their insignia. However, neither Kejriwal’s tweet nor the caption of the image he had tweeted clarified that he was talking about the Nazi insignia and not the Hindu symbol Swastika.
Twitterati were visibly angry at Kejriwal’s tweet which came on the eve of Holi, the Hindu festival.
https://twitter.com/ajaysingh0018/status/1108411378245656579?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/iAnkitaLal/status/1108414865368993792?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Read also: “Kejriwal-Insults-Hanuman” trends on Twitter as outrage over Kejriwal’s tweet grows
https://twitter.com/BBTheorist/status/1108412360568406016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/losmonrekha/status/1108410648084385792?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
As described above, on closer inspection, it does look like a robber with a broom trying to chase away Hindus. It is not new for the Delhi Chief Minister to hurt religious sentiments. In 2016, during the run-up to the Punjab assembly elections, AAP’s youth manifesto had an image of The Golden Temple which had the AAP party symbol of the broom right next to it.
AAP’s then Delhi Dialogue Commission head Ashish Khetan had also gone ahead to say that the manifesto was as holy to them as the Guru Granth Sahib or the Geeta, thereby trivialising the holy scriptures.